Wednesday, December 31, 2008

by Nebojsa Malic"What comes next is anybody's guess" were the closing words of this column in December 2007. That had been a turbulent year, marked by a series of setbacks for the Empire on all fronts. Aside from the ongoing quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan, even in the Balkans – the region handpicked for the demonstration of hegemony – things were not proceeding according to plan.Ironically, during 2008 the situation became reversed. While the Empire managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in the Balkans, its grip slipped away everywhere else. If the purpose of creating an "independent" Kosovo was to reinforce US hegemony, then it was a Pyrrhic victory, set against the rise of China, a resurgent Russia, a rebellious Latin America, and an economic crisis that shook the very foundations of the West. The sight of two shoes hurled at Emperor Bush by an Iraqi journalist during a press conference in Baghdad was just the finishing touch.More...antiwar.com

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Ioannis MichaletosHundreds of Bosnians have protested against a ban on Father Christmas in Sarajevo’s kindergartens. The directors of Sarajevo’s day-care centres, kindergartens and nurseries banned Father Christmas. They argued that the capital is predominantly Muslim and Father Christmas is not part of the Muslim tradition.But a multi-religious mix of parents, childrenMore...

New York, NY, December 28, 2008…The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today strongly criticized the U.N. Security Council statement on Israel's retaliatory action against Hamas in Gaza as "sheer hypocrisy" for suggesting an "equivalency" between Hamas' terrorism and Israel's attempts to eliminate that terrorismMore...

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Asked to elaborate during the panel discussion on the supposed “parallels” between contemporary “Islamophobia” and traditional anti-Semitism, Benz pointed, for instance, to the notion that Islam “requires Muslims to make war against non-believers.” The problem with this comparison, of course, is that it is not, first or foremost, Islamophobes who have disseminated such a notion, but rather Islamists. Whether or not the Islamist interpretation of the Quran is the correct one is beside the point. Numerous Muslims around the world have been convinced enough that it is proper to translate said “notion” into deadly real practice. The September 11 attacks, the Bali bombings, the Madrid bombings, the London bombings, the 11/26 Mumbai attacks, and innumerable other Islamist-inspired terror attacks in the last seven years make this abundantly obvious. To leave all of this out of account — or to treat September 11, 2001 as just some date that for no …More...achgut.com

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Bosnia is flooded with Wahhabis and Saudi money, mosques and madrasas are springing up everywhere, women are in hijabs -- but no worries. Bosnia is a secular, moderate Muslim country and will stay that way, and you better not dare to take too much notice of its rapid descent into jihadist fanaticism, unless you want to be labeled a neofascist supporter of Serbian genocide!Such febrile fantasies and frequently libelous charges hurled against critics of the spread of jihadism in the Balkans, even by some who claim to oppose the global jihad, continue to prevent a sober analysis of what is happening there. And they help enable the jihadists to continue their work there unhindered, enjoying even the support of the abysmally clueless State Department.More...jihadwatch.org

Friday, December 26, 2008

The original mission of the publicly funded center, founded in 1982 by a Jewish survivor of the Nazis, was to study anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, as well as xenophobia and racism in general. In recent years, however, the center has increasingly focused on discrimination against non-Jewish minorities. Reflecting this tendency, Wolfgang Benz, the center’s director since 1990, wrote in a preview to this month’s conference that “The fury of the new enemies of Islam parallels the older rage of anti-Semites against the Jews.”More...

A mass grave with bodies of Serbs has been found in a village of Burelj in Albania says the sources close to the war crimes prosecution office in Belgrade. “The location of the mass grave has been marked in a part of the UN report from March 2004 that still has not been officially forwarded to... More...

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

By Milton Gaither“I never really told anybody about my music at school, only my really close friends,” Cheyenne Kimball told People Magazine in 2006. “Then [school officials] actually aired the show around the whole entire school, and that caused a lot of problems. I was a straight-A student and all of a sudden I didn’t want to go to school anymore because of the things people were saying. That’s why I’m homeschooled now.” Cheyenne, winner of NBC’s America’s Most Talented Kid at age 12, recording artist, and star of her own MTV show, is just one of many high-profile Americans whose educational choices make it clear that homeschooling has gone mainstream. Bethany Hamilton, a homeschooled surfer girl, became an instant celebrity when she survived a shark attack in 2003 that cost her an arm. Her tragedy and inspiring recovery have been leveraged into a “mini-empire” of merchandise, including her own perfume, accessory line, fiction, advice books, and autobiography. Movie stars Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, married in 1997, homeschool their two children along with Will’s nephew. Why? “For flexibility,” Jada told an Essence reporter, “so they can stay with us when we travel, and also because the school system in this country—public and private—is designed for the industrial age. We’re in a technological age. We don’t want our kids to memorize. We want them to learn.”More...frontpagemag.com

Monday, December 22, 2008

by Lenora Foerstel, globalresearchUnder the Bush administration, the United States has demonstrated little, if any, respect for the fundamental rules of international law, human rights, and the American Constitution. In particular, by arbitrarily conferring sovereignty on the Serbian province of Kosovo, the United States has violated the territorial rights and sovereignty of Serbia.The independence of the United Nations and the Security Council is often compromised by American influence and intimidation. Bowing to American and British pressure, the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon handed over the power of the UN mission in Kosovo to the European Union, violating UN resolution 1244, which acknowledged Serbian sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Secretary General’s actions were carried out without the consent of the Security Council and in opposition to the will of Serbia.More...

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Kosovo Albanian sepratist media cite a story published by a German paper Die Welt which reported that hundreds of millions of euros allocated for Kosovo’s reconstruction were stolen and misused by UNMIK employees. The claims are based on reports prepared by EU and UN investigators. German newspaper is quoted as saying: “Recently, two independent reports, one by . . .More...

Friday, December 19, 2008

by Nebojsa Malic"Fears of new ethnic conflict in Bosnia," declared the New York Times on December 13, in an article that may yet be one of the most curious cases of the dog that did not bark. Authored by Dan Bilefsky, what is supposed to be a news feature ends up being a somewhat subtle editorial promoting more American intervention in this bloodied corner of Europe. Yet nothing in the article is actually news. The "recent" editorial by ex-US envoy Richard Holbrooke and ex-viceroy Paddy Ashdown that Bilefsky invokes was actually published in mid-October, and the ongoing feud between Muslim leader Haris Silajdzic and Serb prime minister Milorad Dodik is as novel as the "discovery" that water might, in fact, be wet.More...antiwar.com

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Nothingnewhere. "Turkey: Regulations hobble Protestant churches, from Compass Direct News, December 15:ISTANBUL, December 15 (Compass Direct News) – In the city of Samsun on the north coast of Turkey, the beleaguered congregation of the Agape Church Association struggles against local Islamic hostility toward its presence. In the last three years Agape church members have endured false allegations and verbal abuse from Muslim and nationalist locals. Their pastor has received death threats, and their building has been vandalized, all in an attempt to stop the 30 or so Christians from meeting.More...dhimmiwatch.org

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

LAST WEEK, on four consecutive days, there were anti-Israeli articles in Norway’s second-largest daily Aftenposten. The first called for a general boycott of Israel. The second promoted an academic boycott, falsely accusing Israeli physicians of participating in torture and the Israeli Medical Association of remaining silent about it. Any honest debater would have reported that Israeli hospitals routinely treat Palestinian children, some of whom express joy when suicide bombers kill Israelis. One wonders whether any other country would allow this.The third article stressed the right to criticize Israel. This is a typical attack on a “straw man,” as nobody denies this right. The fourth claimed that Israel is not a democracy. Only thereafter a pro-Israeli voice was heard.Two years ago the conservative Aftenposten got international attention when it published an op-ed by Jostein Gaarder which until this day remains the vilest anti-Semitic article published …More...

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

According to the BBC, Richard Falk is a “senior UN human rights official.” The phrase confers on him a gravitas which he doesn’t deserve and masks the farce involved in handing a 9/11 conspiracy theorist a mandate to bash Israel.Yesterday, Israel expelled Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories. Israel was right to do so.More...Z Word Blog

Monday, December 15, 2008

Bertelsmann’s “Trans-Atlantic Briefing Book” is available here. Bertelsmann also refers to it as a “European Briefing Book for Barack Obama”. The document sets out a “roadmap” for transatlantic cooperation during Obama’s first six months in office. In typical Bertelsmann style, the authors do not hesitate to speak on behalf of all of Europe and all Europeans. The tone of the document more closely resembles that of a Diktat laid down by a victorious power to a defeated adversary than that of a policy papers published by a customary think-tank. Although providing what are merely styled “recommendations,” the authors’ preferred register is in fact bluntly imperative. Thus the very first sentence reads: “Engaging with Europe is not an option” (i.e., not merely an option). The “Briefing Book,” we are told shortly thereafter, will identify “items that must specifically be addressed” (my emphasis) in the “short window” following the inauguration (p. 5). …More...

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Vaclav Klaus was an outspoken dissident under the Communist regime, and he has come to regard the EU as dangerously anti-democratic. But he compounds this sin with highly sceptical views on global warming, on which he recently published a book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles. He likens the extreme environmentalism favoured by the EU to Communism, as a serious threat to democracy, freedom and prosperity. So when Klaus was due to meet the MEPs, one of them decided this was a moment to display the Euro-elite’s hostility to him. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who is German born but lives in France, first came to prominence in Paris in 1968 as a student agitator. He is now leader of the Green MEPs. Talking loudly in the plane to Prague, he made no secret of his intentions, and brief French journalists on how to get maximum publicity for his planned insults.More...

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Marko Nicović, former chief of Belgrade Police, argues that trafficking narcotics and keeping Kosovo province crime zone out of the reach of law is the main reason for Priština rebellion against the European Union. He has many more arguments for this claim after returning from the gathering of International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) in San Diego.- Kosovo province is the key point as far as the drug smuggling is concerned, especially heroin. On the other hand, the Colombian mafia uses the Albanian mafia as a base for the whole of Western Europe. Thus, the two most powerful mafias are connected and Europe will have a major problem in that regard, - Nicović said in an interview for Pravda.More...

Friday, December 12, 2008

By Ioannis MichaletosThe Balkan terrain, especially Bosnia in the past decade, were used as a regional hub for a plethora of intelligence services and organizations across the planet, all vying for establishing bases and extracting local support. The reason being was the importance of the region as a staging point for infiltration into Western Europe or the Eurasian states. The role of the Iranian intelligence & security services was significant up until the late '90's. Presently they have been outnumbered by radical Sunnis that are supported from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.More...SERBIANNA

Thursday, December 11, 2008

THE LEFTIST movement in West Germany completely changed its view of Israel after the war of 1967. Prior to then, its majority was philo-Semitic (in a problematic way); afterward it became staunchly pro-Arab and anti-Israel - if not openly anti-Semitic. Israel was accused of committing the same crimes as Nazi Germany, and the Palestinians were seen as “the Jews of the Jews.” This was an easy way for German leftist to get rid of the burden of Auschwitz and make up for the anti-fascist struggle their parents never fought. Due to the constellation of the Cold War, as well as for ideological reasons, the German Democratic Republic was consistently anti-Israel as well. It had a strong relationship with Arab dictatorships, and was one of the leading weapons suppliers of the PLO. Zionism was seen as a racist ideology, and the Jewish state as the spearhead of imperialism and colonialism subjugating …More...achgut.com

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Kosovo Albanian separatist leadership is implicated in cigarette smugglers, extortion rackets, drug dealers and has ties to international Jihad groups says the Wall Street Journal whose reporters viewed a 2005 German report. “In the BND report, a copy of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci is linked to paramilitary...More...SERBIANNA

Anti-Semitism experts in Germany, the US and Israel are leading an escalating assault on Berlin’s Center for Research on Anti-Semitism, accusing the center and its director, Wolfgang Benz, of equating Islamophobia with anti-Semitism while ignoring Iran’s genocidal threats toward Israel and trivializing the Holocaust. What started as a row among scholars triggered by the center’s conference on Monday, “Concepts of the Muslim Enemy - Concepts of the Jewish Enemy,” has turned into a heated public debate over the center’s work. Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel expressed misgivings to The Jerusalem Post: “If indeed the Berlin Center for Anti-Semitism downplays the Iranian anti-Semitic threat, it surely is deplorable.”More...achgut.com

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Wait, no, scratch that. His name is Youssef Mohammed el-Hajj Dib -- more likely a Muslim than a Maronite. Not that his religion had anything to do with this. Oh, no. To think that would be "Islamophobic." He just probably objected to the gum stuck to the bottom of his seat on the commuter train."Germany: Lebanese man found guilty of bomb plot," from AKI, December 9 (thanks to C. Cantoni):Dusseldorf, 9 Dec. (AKI) - A Lebanese man (Photo) has been sentenced to life in prison for a failed plot to bomb a German commuter train in 2006. A regional court in the city of Dusseldorf on Tuesday convicted 24-year-old Youssef Mohammed el-Hajj Dib of multiple counts of attempted murder and attempting to cause an explosion.Prosecutors said el-Hajj Dib and an accomplice, Jihad Hamad, boarded two trains in Cologne, one headed for Koblenz, one for Dortmund, in July 2006 with two suitcase bombs that failed to explode.The bombs failed to detonate, but prosecutors said the planned attacks in western Germany could have caused up to 75 casualties.Ottmar Breidling, the presiding judge, said el-Hajj Dib was guilty of a "terrorist act" and dismissed the defendant's claim that he had only deposited a mock bomb packed in a suitcase in a rail carriage to scare the German public....Still, this is possible. Maybe his mission was only to "strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah" (Qur'an 8:60).jihadwatch

Monday, December 08, 2008

Surprisingly, the Berlin Center for Research on Antisemitism adopted the neologism “Islamophobia” without any reservation and put anti-Muslim sentiments and antisemitism in the same category. Today, the Center is presenting its new findings at a conference in Berlin titled “Concepts of the Muslim Enemy – Concepts of the Jewish Enemy”. My critical assessment of this event is published in today’s Wall Street Journal.

It is certainly necessary to oppose the demonization of Muslims and discrimination against them, which often have racist motivations. The Berlin center, whose research covers prejudices in general, is right to address this issue. The problem lies in the way it is being done. The Berlin center adopts the neologism “Islamophobia” without any reservation. This term is misleading because it mixes two different phenomena—unjust hatred against Muslims and necessary criticism of political Islam—and condemns both equally. By accepting this vocabulary, the Berlin center reinforces an unfortunate trend. In May 2005, the Council of Europe—at the urging of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan—used the term for the first time, condemning “all forms of intolerance . . . including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.”More...

Sunday, December 07, 2008

The last Serbs in the village Kriljevo, near Kosovska Kamenica in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija, were found dead in their house on Friday, December 5, 2008.Municipal President Boban Jevtić told Serbian media that Stanko (77) and Stanica (74) had been murdered and that he was notified of the discovery by the Kosovo Albanian police, which has cordoned off the entrance to the village.He told Kosovo-Metohija Radio that he received information from the trusted sources that the elderly couple was, indeed, killed in their own house.“I have learned this from the eyewitness whom I prefer not to name for his own safety, but he saw them being murdered,” Jevtic said.More...

Saturday, December 06, 2008

Does Mumbai give the Israelis license to bomb Iranian nuclear installations? That thought certainly want through my head in the last few days. And I imagine I am not the only one. Mumbai was a true act of religious mania and what we are witnessing in Iran is the same thing writ large. Does anyone want a country where police go around cracking down on “satanic dress“and closing un-Islamic barber shops to have nuclear arms? Sure, not all the mullahs are religious lunatics. Some are merely Mafioisi profiteering on religious lunatics (a relief!), but enough of them believe their psychotic ideology to take this really seriously. A nuclear armed Iran would be liking giving a loaded gun to an infant. No wonder the Israelis are preparing. Wouldn’t you under the circumstances?

Now, I am not advocating the “Barbara Ann” solution. But I am sure the Israelis are doing their saber rattling to wake everyone up, increase the sanctions. Will this happen? In this greedy world, I doubt it. But you gotta try.

Friday, December 05, 2008

On the character of the Iranian regime and its nuclear ambitionsLecture by Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi(Executive Director of the Transatlantic Institute, Brussels)Chair: Simone Dinah Hartmann (STOP THE BOMB)Wednesday, December 10th, 19.30University of Vienna, Neues Institutsgebäude, lecture hall IIUniversitätsstraße 7, 1010 ViennaThis event is organized by STOP THE BOMB and co-sponsored by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East – Austria and the student representatives for political scienceIs Iran developing nuclear weapons? This is a question discussed at the international level, and the position of the new American administration and the European Union regarding the Iranian regime will decisively impact world politics in the upcoming months. The question of the purpose of the Iranian nuclear program can only be answered if one provides clarity on the character of the Iranian regime and its ambitions. Emanuele Ottolenghie will talk about the history, the current situation, and possible future developments regarding the Iranian nuclear program in the context of the Khomeinist ideology, and will further answer the question what an appropriate reaction of the European Union and its member states to the nuclear ambitions and human rights violations of the Iranian regime would be.

Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi is a political scientist and Director of the Transatlantic Institute in Brussels. He frequently writes for publications such as Newsday, Commentary, National Review Online, The Middle East Quarterly, Jewish Chronicle, The Guardian, The Daily Mirror, Die Welt, Il Corriere del Ticino, L’Unità, Il Foglio, Libero, Il Reformista and Standpoint Magazine.The lecture and discussion will be held in English.

Book by Ljiljana Bulatovic-Medic, available only in Serbian for the time being, “Screams and the Omen”, a harrowing testimony about the agony Bosnian Serbs were subjected to by their Muslim neighbors in Srebrenica death camps during the Bosnian civil war (1992-1995), was promoted yesterday in Belgrade, by the Association of Writers of Serbia.With the third book in the edition “The Real Srebrenica”, Ljiljana Bulatovic-Medic has given a valuable contribution to establishing the full truth about the martyrdom and bloodcurdling sufferings of the Serbs in Srebrenica, which is to this day entirely ignored by the Western officials and the mainstream media.Through the conversations with the victims and survivors of the Bosnian Muslim death camps, she presents the authentic testimony about the depraved, savage tortures of the Bosnian Serb women, mothers and their children still in the cradle, of how the paralyzed old men were being slaughtered and the monstrous physical and psychological abuses Bosnian Muslim “fighters” have subjected the imprisoned Serbs to, the final fate of many of whom remains unknown to this day.More...

Thursday, December 04, 2008

The Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) of the Technical University in Berlin has scheduled a conference on December 8 titled “The concept of the enemy Muslim - concept of the enemy Jew.” In publicity for this conference the ZfA writes that the “paradigm” of accusations against Muslims is known from “the history of anti-Semitism.” It seems that the organizers feel there is a moral equivalence between garden-variety prejudice (portrayed as “Islamophobia") and anti-Semitism. This is a dangerous course, particularly in Germany, which saw the quintessential manifestation of anti-Semitism in modern times.Quite aside from the fact that Judaism embraces both a race and a religion, whereas Islam is strictly a religion, anti-Semitism is different than other forms of prejudice or racism. Whereas the racist view of blacks, for example, holds that they are “below” whites, anti-Semites think Jews are planning to rule the world. The Israel …More...achgut.com

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

by Peter SchwarzThe arrest of three German secret service agents in Kosovo exposes the sort of society that has been developed with German and American support in this former part of Yugoslavia—one mired in corruption, organised crime and secret service plots.The affair began on November 14, when a bomb exploded outside the office of the European Union special representative, Pieter Feith, in Kosovo’s capital, Pristina. The building was damaged but no one was hurt. Immediately afterward in a neighbouring building, a German man, Andreas J., was observed and questioned by the Kosovan security forces, and unmasked as an agent of Germany’s Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND, Secret Service). This is according to the public prosecutor’s office. German sources, however, claim that Andreas J. only came to the scene four hours after the explosion to take photographs.Normally, such secret service affairs between friendly governments are settled quietly and discreetly, usually by the departure of the unmasked agents. Not so in this case. Last week, the police arrested Andreas J. and two additional BND agents, accusing them of having planted the bomb at the EU’s International Civilian Office (ICO) building.More...

Monday, December 01, 2008

Far from petering out after the Friday release of three BND agents who were arrested on bogus charges by the Albanian separatists in Pristina on November 19th, German outrage by the Kosovo Albanian arrogance appears to have reached a point of boiling over.According to the Welt am Sonntag, German government has since Friday been seriously considering freezing aid it has already promised to the fake state which it helped form on the territory of Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija.Although a final decision has not been reached yet, the German weekly reports that concrete suggestions have been made about cutting aid in specific areas, and that the main area under consideration is defense.More...

At present, the death toll from the terrorist attacks in India's commercial capital, Mumbai, which began Wednesday night and finally came to an end yesterday morning, stands at 172 (not 195 as stated in some news reports yesterday) though it is likely to riseMore...